G.R.A.C.E.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

BlogFam, over the last few posts, we have been exploring the GRACE of God as expressed in Paul's testimony about the thorn in his flesh. On today, we finally get to the answer from God to Paul's request for God to take his thorn away.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My GRACE is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

Greetings!

BlogFam, have you ever asked the Lord for something over and over? I mean you have prayed and you might have even fasted. You have been faithful to do all that you know to do. You have found Scriptures to decree and declare the thing to be so and have been reading or reciting those verses as your confessions of faith.

6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations.

Greetings!

BlogFam, I do not know very many people who do not have at least ONE thing in their life that they are excited to brag about! I have heard people brag about their children, their spouses, their jobs, their degrees, their trophies, their wise decisions, their "spotless" records, their financial stability, their musical abilities, their huge responsibilities, and almost anything else you can think of!

While I was in seminary at Emory University - Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, GA, I took a course in Systematic Theology. I will not bore you with the details of every assignment required, besides, I do not even recall them all but I do remember one of the most profound questions I was ever asked along my journey of spiritual formation. Dr. Noel Erskine was lecturing and he got to the point of the lecture where he paused and asked us -